Honestly, as a student, I can say for sure that school these days feels more like students trying their best to pass exams than actually learning in class. The whole system seems to focus more on results and grades instead of real understanding of what is being taught.
Most students read mainly because of exams, not necessarily because they want to understand the subject deeply.
From my own experience, I can clearly see how this happens. I wrote an exam before coming home in February, and to be honest, I didn’t really prepare seriously until a few weeks before the exam. Once the exam period started getting close, that was when the serious reading began. Like many other students, I ended up cramming a lot of information within a short period of time just so I could pass the exam. In the end, I actually passed the exam, but when I think about it now, I sometimes wonder what the real benefit was.
Of course, I can still remember a few things that I studied during that time, but most of the information is already gone from my head.
That is one of the biggest problems with the system. We students read a lot of things within a short period of time, write them down in the exam hall, and after the exam, many of those things slowly disappear from our memories. It always almost feels like the goal is just to pass the exam and move on, not necessarily for us to truly understand the course.
I also saw how stressful the whole exam process can be for students. Some of my mates barely slept during the exam period because they were trying to cover as much as possible before each paper. They would stay up very late at night reading and wake up early again the next day to continue. Infact, there was a particular day i was having two exams the next day. So i had to stay up late and the worst thing was that there wasn't even light for me to read properly.
Everyone was just trying to survive the exams and come out with good grades. In some cases, the stress became too much, and some of my mates even fell sick after their exams were over.
Personally, I don’t think education should be this stressful or focused only on exams. School should be a place where students actually understand what they are studying and develop useful skills that will help them in the future.
Instead of everything being about tests and grades, I feel the system should give more attention to practical learning and real-life experience.
For example, students should have more opportunities to do practical work and hands-on activities related to their courses. I believe practical experience helps students feel more confident about what they are learning.
I remember having the chance to interact with some of my mates that graduated as computer science students in my school last year, and something I noticed surprised me. Many of them perform very well in their exams and even get excellent grades. However, when it comes to some basic programming skills, a few of them struggle with things that they should already know. So basically this just proved to me that passing exams does not always mean someone truly understands the subject.
Due to this, I honestly feel that the schooling system needs some serious changes. Maybe, if there is a better balance between theory and practical learning, students would gain much more from their education.
Thanks for reading.